Experimental Film - Evaluation

This project has been very different to anything I've tried to make before. I feel as though it has really challenged me in tasks that I have never thought to attempt before and even though they may not have ended up the way I wanted, I'm glad that I've at least had the opportunity to try out new things. The general plot for my film was to touch up on a few things, I'll start with the character of my film first. The reason as to why he wears a blue morphsuit is because I wanted it to resemble being just plain and bland, only one colour meaning only one feeling. Everything was neutral. Moving up the character to his face and his stitched mouth and the reasons for it. I wanted to symbolise how a lot of people in the modern day are too scared to say how they truly feel as they are worried about the outcome and consequences. That lead to the meaning of the cable and the monitor, I feel as though a lot of people can only speak their mind as long as theres a helping hand (i.e. The man is unable to speak due to the stitches and must communicate by displaying his thoughts and fears onto a monitor). I tried to link the thoughts and fears to modern day problems which is why I included the clip with Donald Trump as he is a very intimidating character in todays society.

With regards to the post production, I feel as though I have just been very unlucky, especially on the filming day where I had constant interruptions and in the editing stage where I had to wait for my special effects friend to get back to uni. Having said all of this, I feel as though I coped very professionally with all of my problems that I faced and produced a relatively high quality film which I am quite happy with. Obviously I am not completely pleased with it because I would have loved to have filmed more takes so I feel like the start of the film works very well and is very well paced and edited but towards the end I feel like it is very rushed and that it is very noticeable that it is rushed but other than that, I am pleased with how my film came out and if I had the chance I would love to go back to it and finish the project with as much time as possible to really make something I'm proud of.

Experimental Film - Editing Part 2

Once it got to the part of the project where I had to edit the special effects it was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I've never used After Effects before so the whole software looked bizarre to me so instead of trying to press a load of buttons I didn't know, I looked up tutorials on how to do what I wanted. Even after doing this I realised that I was using the newest version of After Effects, different to what the tutorials were showing so a lot of the buttons and options were either out of place or not available anymore. Because of this I had to turn to a friend who specialises in After Effects to teach me what to do as I was still clueless on how to do everything and asked if he could show me how to do it myself. The two things that I needed doing was to have second hand footage playing on a monitor as the camera zoomed into it and to also change the eye colour of my actors eyes. My friend showed me how to create a mask for the monitor and how to track its movement with the camera as it zoomed in. He also showed me how to make null objects and how to follow the path of the actors eyes without doing it frame by frame which was extremely convenient. The whole editing process was very lengthy but was worth it in the end.

Experimental Film - Editing Part 1

The editing stage for my film was very different to any other project I've worked on. This is because it was my first time properly using Premiere Pro so of course, learning the software as I go along was a challenging task. With this project I really wanted to try using foley sound a lot more and so for this reason I only used the camera whilst filming, evidently making the film practically silent as there was no use of exterior microphones. I started piecing the silent clips together and it all went well. I then hired out a Zoom microphone and started recording sounds. The first sound that I really wanted was an ambient buzzing sound; I got this by leaving the microphone next to a powered fridge in a large kitchen which gave it a nice textured echo. I then saw that there was little sounds that I had forgotten to include like the fact that the actor is wearing a lycra suit, meaning that he would swish slightly when he walked. After realising this, I used the exact suit that the actor wore and as I watched the footage back I swished the suit in time with his movement and to my surprise it worked really well. It isn't the most overpowering sound but it is an essential one that you may not notice at first.

Experimental Film - Filming

The filming process for this project was a very difficult one. I had planned as much as I could have and everything looked okay on paper. My first encounter was through no fault but my own which was that I had previously thought that the costume/makeup would take about 10 minutes maximum whereas it took about 40 minutes. Baring in mind that I only had the room for 2hrs 30mins this was quite the setback. The filming began and everything seemed to be going well; the communication between the cast and crew was good and we were slightly ahead of schedule. We had filmed about half of the film right up until things started to go downhill. A fire alarm went off meaning that the shoot had to come to a stop and everyone had to be evacuated from the building. We were stood outside for about 10 minutes and once we were allowed back in, the fire alarm went off a second time, meaning that we'd lost about 20 minutes in total. After all of this happening I then had a teacher let me know that he had the room booked from 1pm for tutorials with his students even though I had booked the room out until 1.30pm, meaning that this cut off another 30 minutes of filming time. Because of all these unfortunate reasons, it meant that we had to rush a lot of shots just hoping that we could get everything we needed.

Overall, considering the amount of unwanted setbacks we had, resulting in losing about an 1hr 30mins of filming time; I feel like we coped with it very professionally, not just throwing the towel in and actually made use of the 1 hour film time that we ended up with. Obviously if I were to do the shoot again I imagine there wouldn't be so many inconveniences on the day. In a sense, I am happy that what happened happened because it has helped me a lot as a film maker, forcing me to make decisions in a short amount of time, making each minute count.

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Eraserhead)

Going back to the beginning of this unit, I remember watching a clip from the 1977 film, Eraserhead directed by David Lynch. The film was shot in black and white and was the first ever feature film by Lynch, continuing from a series of shorts that he had made prior. The genre of the film is a "Surrealist body horror" film, meaning that there are a number of disturbing scenes in the film which interested me a lot seeing as I have been very keen to see how directors achieved a disturbed looking film in the earlier years of film. Lynch does a magnificent job of creating tension using minimal dialogue which is at the top of my list for things I want to achieve when filming my film. There is a scene in the film in which the main character, Spencer is in a room with a small alien like creature which quickly becomes covered in flies, symbolising that it is sick. This is a very disturbing scene which is created predominantly using sound and realistically I would like to be able to achieve a successful scene creating the same tension and atmosphere as David Lynch did in this scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKhURjt9x5A

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Poppy)

I have been looking into things that a lot of people can agree is physiologically 'creepy' and see the effects it has on people and see how they react when watching something of this calibre. There is a popular girl who is internet famous for standing out for odd reasons by the name of Poppy. Her videos consist of her just explaining random things she is doing but uses very uncomfortable angles, getting very close to the camera at times whilst talking in a soft but sinister voice. There have been lots of speculation with poppy's videos regarding if there is a hidden meaning behind all of them, if she is really as strange as her character portrays or if she is just a hired actress and the whole this is just a scheme to creep people out. I knew what my opinion of Poppy was but I decided to look further into if other people see her how I do and if so, how they felt about her videos. I found a video of a series of children watching her videos and reacting to them and as I expected, even children find her awkwardly disturbing which wasn't really a surprise. I really like the production of her videos though, how she is always just in a blank room and everything about Poppy is very light and pure; She has white hair, pale skin, light coloured clothes, along with a white background. The background is exactly what I want in my film but I may have to settle for something a little less production-wise. 

Poppy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4nHLHDtyVA

Kids React to Poppy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQkYgw52PnE

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Teddy Has An Operation)

Although I have had my heart set on trying to go for a completely phycological thriller, I decided to see if it were possible to still achieve this but on a much more light hearted scale. Through searching for a video like this, I came across a video called 'Teddy Has An Operation'. This video shows the autopsy of a teddy bear and includes a doctors hands performing surgery on the bear with a narrator explaining everything that is happening to the teddy in almost a children show host type of voice. The video begins quite innocent saying that the bear has a 'sweet layer' and reveals a lot of small wrapped candies. The innocence of the video then disappears when the doctor opens a sweet and there are used cigarette butts in it. After fiddling with the bear for a bit longer the doctor removes another layer of the bears insides and we are then met with lots of human organs inside the bears chest to which the doctor proceeds to pick out and mess with. I really like this video as it shows a lot of twisted, sinister things whilst still being able to sugarcoat the entire video in a sense and is something that I would definitely be inclined to try in the future as I think it makes the video very enjoyable to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYaTa_lOf4

Experimental Film - Relative Work (Dining Room or There is Nothing)

The other video that my brother recommended to me is a very strange video called 'Dining Room or There is Nothing'. In this video is shows a girl sitting at a dining table, with a roaring fire behind her whilst she is staring directly down the lens of the camera with piercing eyes. The girl then opens her mouth and says a cluster of sounds. The camera zooms out and the girl slams her face into a bowl that is just in front of her on the table. The camera zooms out to a certain point and then the whole video goes back in reverse, making the camera zoom towards the girl who then lifts her head from the bowl but this time with the audio reversed she says "There is nothing" and the video ends. This video is relevant to me because it purely just makes no sense and is overall very creepy. I want to make the viewers of my film to feel the same way as I did watching this film. The thing I like about these types of videos is that you always feel that something is going to happen so there is a constant fear of tension leaving the viewer pondering whether or not something is going to scare them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns1SGo3WCF4

Experimental Film - Relative Work (I Feel Fantastic)

I have recently been speaking to my family, explaining my idea to them. Upon doing this my brother told me that he knew of a couple disturbing videos that he thinks would be relative to my work. He recommended a couple videos to me, one of which was called 'I Feel Fantastic'. After watching this video I felt it was essential to include it in my work as it focuses on phycological horror; making the viewer unsettled and on edge whilst watching it. The video consists of a female mannequin/robot standing in a small room singing the words "I Feel Fantastic" in a robotic tune The video will occasionally change shot of the mannequin or the mannequin will change its pose completely. The video has no real meaning and usually leaves the viewer unsure of what they've just seen. Seeing as this video ticks the boxes for everything I want in my video, I definitely feel like it is necessary research and I may even end up using it as second hand footage in my film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLy-AwdCOmI

Experimental Film - Schedule

Seeing as there is going to be a lot going on at once during this production, I have made a schedule to prioritise what I am going to be doing during these upcoming weeks. I feel as though this schedule is definitely going to help me keep all of my work on track. I have also colour coded it as personally I always find that when I colour code things they are a lot easier to follow.

Experimental Film: Storyboards

A few days ago I started planning what I wanted my shots to look like on my experimental film. Below are the sequence of images that I came up with.

These are the first thumbnails of the shots that I want in my film. In the very first shot I want a shot of the open room with the leg of the table slightly in shot and to be the main thing in focus, there will be a rattle of the door handle and the lens will pull and put the rest of the room as the focus. The second shot will be simple enough of a fairly close up shot of the door handle twitching and then the main character opening and walking through the door. The third will be a tracking shot of the main characters feet walking across the room. Because I don't have access to equipment such as a slider, I am creating my own makeshift slider by mounting the camera to a skateboard and pushing it along so it stays steady. The fourth shot will simply be of the characters body in front of a chair before sitting down in it and revealing his face. The next shot will just be of a cable and the subjects hand reaching into shot and grabbing it. The last of the first 6 will be a shot from behind the subject, showing him inserting the cable into the back of his neck from a side on view.

The next shot will show the subject plugged in and waiting gormlessly from the back which will then be followed by a close up of the subjects face, again looking gormless. There will then be a shot of the monitor as it starts to load up saying things such as 'processing'. I will then have a close up of the subjects stitched mouth which will be twitching slightly as he waits for the monitor load. The monitor will then load and/or get to 100% and the subjects eyes will suddenly change to a mesmerising shade of blue.

I am still yet to finish my storyboard but I am happy with how I plan to start my film with regards to how I want it to look. 

Experimental Film - Relative Film (Semiotics of the Kitchen)

When mentioning about how I wanted to include elongated takes, I remembered the controversial film that we watched in class called Semiotics of the Kitchen, made in 1975. The film doesn't really have a narrative as it just shows a woman in the kitchen picking up kitchen appliances and naming them in alphabetical order. The reason why I find this video so relevant to my idea is because of the extremely awkward long silence right at the start of the video. It's exactly the sort of thing that I was imagining for my film. It's like we've seen everything we need to see in the shot but it still stays there for unwanted time, making the viewer question if anything is going to happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm5vZaE8Ysc

Experimental Film - Relative Film (Dog of Man)

Because my idea is quite abstract, I have been finding it fairly difficult to find videos that relate to my idea. Having said this, I remembered watching a very disturbing video a few years ago called Dog of Man. This rather disturbing film was made in 2008 by David Firth and is a four minute long animated short about a series of disturbing things that a man and his dog do together. The man cannot speak in this film and so he plugs a cable into the top of his dogs head and a speaker appears in the dogs mouth who then proceeds to give strange advice to the man in a posh, British accent. I felt like this part of the film relates to my idea with the cables being plugged in and I especially like the noise that is made in Dog of Man as the cable goes into the dogs head; it makes this squishing like sound effect which could quite easily make a few viewers squirm of they don't particularly like that sort of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o31pmwWNUww

Experimental Film - Treatment

The theme for my experimental video is going to be partly thriller based and partly sci-fi based. I want it to have long takes in places as I want it to make the viewer feel uncomfortable when watching and I am hoping that by including longer takes than needed it will cause this awkward pause at the end of some takes, leaving the viewer being forced to watch something that they don't find comfortable. I plan to structure my video in a non linear way. By this I mean that I am planning to show things such as the exact shots that I use of showing the man enter the room will be played on the screen when he plugs himself into the television and this will hopefully disorientate the viewer which is exactly what I hope to do. With regards to the visual style, I think I want to keep the colour fairly saturated as I want it to represent the mans life but once he plugs in the cable to his neck, the look of the film flips as the colour will do a sharp gradient and have the hue and saturation increased to emphasise the colour as we are seeing what is going on in his head. Once he unplugs himself again the colour will then go back to being saturated and bland to represent that the only time the man feels anything will be when he is plugged into the television. The target audience for my film is suitable for both male and female and will be aimed around the ages of 16+ as I am going to be including themes in the film such as sex, war and bad language, meaning that this video will be suitable for people of a mature mind set.

Experimental Film - The Average Trumper (Short Film)

Last week we were given the task of making a 1 - 2 minute film based around 'The World with Trump'. I didn't really know how to approach this film as it is such a broad topic and there is a lot of material to work with. I wanted to show the side of not trump himself but focus on his followers and their thought process as to why they follow his questionable decisions.

Throughout the film I wanted to show how Trumps followers seem to follow anything he does just because of who he is which is why I first included the clip of myself mirroring the thumbs up picture before showing the 'Make America Great Again' hat clips.

  

Experimental Film - Flip (Short film)

We were given a task last week to make a 1 - 2 minute film on the subject of 'Time'. There were many approaches that could have been taken when making this film but the way in which I wanted to do it was through time travel. Through looking at feature films that are based about time travel, it became apparent that there was a reoccurring theme throughout and that was that time travel has a lot to do with chance. An example of this is the 1985 film, Back to the Future. In the film there is a particular scene in which Marty is driving the De Lorean at a high speed towards a wall, expecting Doc to connect a power source at the right time, thus throwing him back in time. Following this, I wanted to make a film based on chance and so I made this film, Flip.

The underlying message of the film is to not gamble away what you are already happy with for something better. This implements to all things in life be it relationships, money or even peers. The man flips the coin on heads and is taken to a beautiful place that makes him extremely happy, when he returns he instantly wants to see what would happen if he were to get a tails but unfortunately keeps on flipping heads and eventually loses the coin under the fridge. This was meant to symbolise the gambling element of life and show that if you keep trying to attain better things than the ones you already have, you may eventually end up with nothing at all.

Experimental Film - Further Development (Updated Synopsis)

After much thought and having asked my friends and peers about my idea, I have come to the conclusion that my original idea may be too complex. I'm not going to completely abandon the idea as I still think it has a lot of potential to be a good film. I have decided to simplify the idea and instead of showing the relationship between the man and the woman and actually telling a story throughout the video, I wanted to focus on the experimental part of the video which is of course when the man plugs himself into a television and certain videos are played whilst he sits gormlessly. I feel like I really want to try different things when going for the experimental part of the film (deciding what is shown on the television when the man plugs himself in). I do also want to make the viewer feel uncomfortable at times and I have thought about doing this by using certain sound effects like when the man plugs the cable into himself, instead of just seeing it go in, I was thinking about possibly using a squelch sort of effect to emphasise the cable piercing through his skin. Another way I thought about possibly making the viewer uncomfortable was by showing things on the television which the viewers may find distressing like sex or similar explicit content. Of course I wouldn't show videos of people having sex as I want the video to be able to be suitable for all ages but I would work my way around it by changing the shot so that the mans head covers what we see on the television, thus making it so we cannot see the explicit videos.

Experimental Film - Making a Short Film

We were given the task to make a short film that lasts between 1 - 2 minutes and had to be on the topic of 'time'. Originally, I didn't have a clue what to make my film about as I was trying to think what could be interesting enough to gain the viewers attention in the small space of only 1 minute. I eventually decided on the idea of time travel. I decided the way I wanted to approach it was to be along the lines of chance and not knowing which way through time you would go. Because of this I chose to make the story of the film about the chances of flipping a coin and how probability is completely random. My main aim towards this film was to personally focus on trying out different camera angles as I want to get better with how I frame my shots.
The general Idea for the film was to have a man who is in a rush runs up to his kitchen to flip a coin. We don't know why he is in a rush but we go with it. He flips the coin and it lands on heads and we go into his head and come out in a empty beetroot field. This is to show that with just a simple flip of a coin, you could end up in paradise and that it is all chance. We go back into his head and are back in the kitchen where the man likes what just happened to him so he flips the coin again and it lands on tails, we go back into his head again but nothing happens. The man is confused and keeps flipping the coin, constantly getting tails and nothing happens. He then flips the coin out of his reach and the coin rolls under the fridge, never to be seen again. I wanted this to symbolise how you should appreciate where life takes you and not always want something better or essentially gamble away what you have to get something better. I hope this was showed by us seeing the man enjoy what the heads side of the coin gave him, being in a lovely surrounding which he was happy with but deciding to try and get something better by flipping the coin again, not getting what he wanted and eventually losing it all in the end.

Experimental Film - Video Idea: 'Porcelain' (Synopsis)

Since beginning this unit, I have began to think of some ideas that I think would make very interesting films. One of these ideas is an experimental film which I have named 'Porcelain'. When thinking about this idea I wanted to try and make something which I have never tried before, because of this I have chosen the approach of the film to be touching and upsetting as this type of genre is something that I have never attempted before and I feel that there are many ways I can approach it. A song will be playing throughout the video called 'Porcelain', hence the title. I chose this song because I feel that the tempo and the soft voices of the man and woman singing fits the feel that I want for the film perfectly and also how there is a reoccurring line in the song which sings "My brain is porcelain" which I think fits the message of the film extremely well as it suggests the main character isn't mentally stable. The idea for this video is quite complex; it starts with a man laying awake in bed with his blonde wife who is asleep. The man gets up and drives to a large building and enters a small room that is completely white and blank except for a tv screen, a cable and a chair. The man sits in the chair and plugs the cable into the back of his neck, making the pupils of his eyes turn grey and lifeless (this will be done by using contact lenses). The mans memories and feelings are then displayed on the monitor and as he tries to tune the tv, various different images are shown rapidly, some normal, some oddly disturbing; this will be included to show the sensitiveness of his brain and emotions. When he tunes the tv to his desired memory, it is of him and his past lover (who is brunette), dancing slowly together. The shots will cut back to the mans face every so often to show his reactions to certain memories being shown, focusing on his expressions, breathing and overall body language (e.g. twitching, sweating, fidgeting etc). The man tunes the television again to see another memory but slips and horrific scenes of horror films, riots, war and other inhumanly things are played loudly, startling the man (and hopefully the viewer). He finally tunes the television for the last time and the monitor shows a grave of his wife, making the story clear to the viewer that his one true love has actually previously died and so he sneaks off most nights from his current wife to relive his happiest memories with his past lover. The man unplugs himself from the television and drives back to his current wife. He gets back into bed, stares at the ceiling and the film ends. 

Experimental Film - Introduction

To start off this project, we began looking at various experimental films that past students had created. The one that stood out most for me was one called 'Lost and Found'. In this particular film, the students wanted to use items found in Farnham that were not wanted or needed by anyone. An example of this is how the students ended up asking various charity shops if they were allowed to go through their bins to find things that they felt were interesting enough to use. The actual execution of how they showed the items was what I liked most about the film. They made it so that there was a glass screen and it was as though you were sat looking from underneath looking upwards. They would then proceed to put the things that they found on the glass screen which would then be followed with some aged footage of what corresponds to the item; an example of this is when they put leaves down on the glass screen, they would then show footage of some tree's or bushes to show that that is where the chosen item came from.